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In 1939,[3] a dairy owner named J.J. Lawson started a store at his Broad Boulevard dairy plant in Cuyahoga Falls, near Akron, Ohio, to sell his milk. The Lawson's Milk Company grew to a chain of stores, primarily in Ohio.[3] Lawson was bought out by Consolidated Foods in 1959. Lawson's neighborhood convenience stores were common in Ohio from the 1960s through the mid-1980s. They were probably best known for their orange juice, milk, deli counter 'chipped' style ham and sour cream potato chip dips.

In 2002, Alimentation Couche-Tard of Laval, Quebec bought the assets and name of Dairy Mart. Most of the former Dairy Mart stores—many of which were either originally Lawson's stores, or were located in communities in which Lawson's once had a presence—were converted to the Circle K brand. Due to popular response from consumers in Ohio and elsewhere, it was announced that Lawson's Chip Dip would continue to be sold "no matter what the name of the store", as was reported in the Akron Beacon Journal.[8][9]

In 1974, Consolidated signed a formal agreement with Daiei to open the first Lawson stores in Japan. On April 15, 1975 Daiei Lawson Co., Ltd. was established as a wholly owned subsidiary of Daiei, Inc., a retail company which also ran a supermarket chain. The first store opened in Sakurazuka, Toyonaka, Osaka Prefecture in June 1975. In September 1979 the official name was changed to Lawson Japan, Inc.. The Mitsubishi Corporation became the main shareholder in 2001.

As of May 2012 Lawson had solar equipment at only 20 of their stores, but the company announced in June 2012 that it would install solar panels at 2,000 stores of their 10,000 Japanese stores[21] starting in September 2012 and finishing by the end of February 2014. It was estimated that each store would generate an about 11,000kwh per year. Just under 2,000kwh of this would go toward climate control and other in-house uses, which would account for about 1% of each store's power consumption. The rest of the electricity would be sold under Japan's feed-in tariff system that came into operation on July 1, 2012. It was estimated that the company's income from the power generated by the 2,000 stores would come to more than 700 million yen a year.[22]

Lawson planned to install solar panels at 1,000 stores in the 2012-2013 financial year, and 1,000 more in the 2013-2014 financial year. It chose solar panels from Solar Frontier, along with the same company's online monitoring system for the first 1,000 stores.[23]

Lawson Asia Pacific and Puregold Price Club formed a joint venture under the name PG Lawson Company Inc. They opened their first branch in Santa Ana, Manila on March 30, 2015. Under the partnership, Lawson will provide its expertise in convenience store's know-how and product development while Puregold will provide its expertise in product procurement and localized knowledge of the retail consumers.